Hip-Hop Artist Jasiri X Does a Music Video on The Ground at Capitol Square in Madison!

I got this at Jack and Jill Politics. I’m going to work this morning, but I thought I would leave this little something. (Yes, I know: the Wisconsin assembly has passed this vaunted budget repair bill in the deep of the night cutting off any more votes on amendments, thanks to the Fitzgerald brothers.)

Among those reporting from the protests in Wisconsin last week was a journalist of a different sort — Pittsburgh rapper Jasiri X. He worked his way into the mob of 70,000 to shoot the video for his latest protest song, “American Workers vs Multi-Billionaires.”

It was a coincidence that he happened to be in Wisconsin. Four months ago he was booked by the University of Wisconsin-Platteville to be the keynote speaker for a Black History Month celebration. He and local activist/rapper Paradise Gray decided to take the one-hour detour to Madison to visit the workers’ revolt against Republican Gov. Scott Walker.

They couldn’t believe the scale of the protest they saw. So Jasiri did the talk in Platteville and then headed back to Madison to mix with the crowd and shoot a video for a song he had already written.

“I had written the song a week before it all happened,” he says. “I went to D.C. to do this interview on the Russia Today network and met some people who were really into politics, and this guy told me, ‘You know, the next issue is really gonna be the budget.’ I thought about how these decisions are being made by millionaires and billionaires, but they affect people who are most in need. That was the concept of the song, and it was mind-boggling when all this happened.”

The song takes on conservative politicians and right-wing pundits, asking, “When did American workers become the enemy/why is wanting a living wage such a penalty?”

The video finds the rapper smack in the middle of the protest, like he did at the G-20 summit rallies in Pittsburgh in 2009.

“It was an awesome feeling because of the unity of it, especially going into the state house,” he says. “The people were so nice and it was a happy, jovial atmosphere. People weren’t down. They were genuinely happy — drumming, dancing, singing. It was literally so loud that I couldn’t hear the song unless I had earphones in.”

The 30-something Jasiri (full name Jasiri Oronde Smith) came to Pittsburgh from a Chicago gang neighborhood with his mom in the ’80s and graduated from Gateway High School. He made a name for himself nationally in 2007 with “Free the Jena 6,” a commentary on the racially charged case out in Louisiana. A Huffington Post story on his song “What if the Tea Party Was Black” raised his profile higher, generating more than 250,000 YouTube hits. He also hosts an Internet radio show, “This Week With Jasiri X.”

“I’ve found that I’m getting more support as an artist from political blogs and websites than hip-hop websites,” he says. “It’s kind of sad in a sense, being where hip-hop came from, but that’s unfortunately what we’ve been seeing.”

At the moment, Jasiri X is probably the third biggest rapper from Pittsburgh behind Wiz Khalifa and Mac Miller, but even though he works in a different style, he’s a fan of both of them.

The words?

Scott Walker works for multi billionaires
John Boehner works for multi billionaires
while corporations get billions in welfare
and millions in this country been out of work for years

Sarah Palin works for multi billionaires
American workers vs multi billionaires
they wanna end social security and medicare
while millions in this country don’t have a dime to spare

Can main street get a bailout
Tell the president our checks weren’t mailed out
Tell the house of representatives and senate
And whatever business got the stimulus and spent it
Now they getting record profit that’s tripling with no limits
But they cutting jobs and unemployment benefits have ended
How we gone live with no income coming in
And the little help we get is cut from the budget then
What’s the role of government
Do workers stand a chance if multi billionaires are running it
Oh now you worried bout the deficit and cutting it
But when them banks needed billions you had enough for them.
Them car companies you had bucks for them
2 wars rebuilding 2 countries guess we stuck with them
the average citizen just ain’t lucky then
cause we be getting pimped so I guess we getting fucked again

Rush Limbaugh works for multi billionaires
Bill O’Reilly works for multi billionaires
while corporations get billions in welfare
and millions in this country been out of work for years

Sean Hannity works for multi billionaires
Crazy Glenn Beck works for multi billionaires
they wanna end social security and medicare
while millions in this country don’t have a dime to spare

When did the American worker become the enemy
Why is wanting a living wage such a penalty
What happened to justice and liberty
These billionaire haters wanna crush us literally
On the box is Murdoch and his foxes
And if you watch it you might as well be an ostrich
They terrorists cause they hold facts hostage
24 hours straight of we hate what Barack did
If you want to unionize your a communist
But if you buy a congressman they just call you a lobbyist
It’s so obvious but here’s where the problem is
they act like regular Americans but they sloppy rich
Why you think they wanna cut taxes
cause every single one of them in the higher brackets
This ain’t white or black it’s class warfare time for action
Just look at wide the gap is

American workers vs multi billionaires
The middle class vs multi billionaires
while corporations get billions in welfare
and millions in this country been out of work for years

Rupert Murdoch is multi billionaire
the Koch brothers are multi billionaires
they wanna end social security and medicare
while millions in this country don’t have a dime to spare

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